A weblog for Friends of SAR: Josephine County, Oregon

November 13, 2009

Mock Search: Posse Perspective

Eight dollar mountain, November 7, 2009By Laura Harmon

The morning started with a detailed briefing conducted by Shari Friebus with Logistics officer, Bruce Baron and Safety officer, Sheriff Gilbertson. As the specialty teams arrived and we gathered under a couple of tents with a small amount of rain coming down all around us, we were given descriptions of three subjects and handed maps for the 13 individual team search areas.

The Mounted posse team had a great presence with Don Fasching, Larry and Bridget McStravog, Donna Vest, Laura Harmon as team leader and Keri Wu as our logistics officer.

Our search area started at a dirt road and up the side of the mountain, a very rock filled mountain side. We proceeded down the dirt road and found multiple foot tracks matching the description of the subjects. We continued to the end of the area, we than spread out into a line with about six feet in between us and proceeded with a grid search while calling out the names of our subjects. The mountain side became unsafe and we decided to head back to the road and do more of a visual up the mountain side. Laura Harmon spotted a white plastic bag up the side of the mountain and Don Fasching volunteered to climb up and investigate. It was determined that the bag was a clue, so Laura Harmon climbed up to take map co-ordinance and radio back to base. The two made it back down to their horses and continued the search with the team. Several times the team attempted to go up the side of the mountain but to no avail could this be done safely. Laura’s horse Chester suffered a three inch deep cut on his front left leg, Laura and Larry preformed first aid and wrapped the leg and the team continued down as they radioed back to base of the situation.

Although the team was unable to complete the search, command informed them of how close they were to the subject.

Chester is doing well and the wound is healing great.

The Mounted Posse team learned how important it is for every member, to have a GPS and be trained on how to us it. The four team members Jed Hart, Keri Wu, Cris and Ron Usher are trained, however, they were not available for this search and thus we found our team with little knowledge of the GPS.

Hiker Hell"This blog is about learning from other people's mistakes, so you don't make the same ones."
Many stories of how people on hikes got into trouble- the kind of trouble that leads to searches or recoveries.